FOXBOROUGH, Mass.—Billy Cundiff stood before the cameras in the interview room down the hall from the losing locker room Sunday night, and for nearly five minutes he answered all the questions he had to hate hearing.

However, he said little to his Baltimore Ravens teammates before leaving Gillette Stadium. His teammates, likewise, said little to him. They had encouraged him briefly on the sideline and then again in the locker room, but all accounts described the immediate postgame moments as silent and grim.

But in time, the Ravens all spoke a lot about him. More important, they spoke up for him.

The most soul-crushing defeat this franchise ever suffered had been sealed by Cundiff's 32-yard field-goal try, to tie the New England Patriots and send the AFC championship game into overtime, inexplicably sailing wide left with 11 seconds left. The on-field celebration of the Patriots' 23-20 victory—sending them to the Super Bowl instead of the Ravens—was winding down.

The heat on Cundiff, the Ravens' kicker the past 2 1/2 seasons, probably has only just begun. Ravens fans, hurting from a second title-game loss in four years, had already taken to social media to spew every profanity in their repertoire in his direction.

In Foxborough, Cundiff stood up and took it. Then, the Ravens' players and coaches took a ton of it, too, on his behalf.

"He's all right, he's all right," linebacker Terrell Suggs said. "You think he wanted to miss it? We fell three points short. But you learn more in failure than you do in success."

He wasn't disappointed for himself, he said: "My disappointment is letting my teammates down ... Ray (Lewis) poured his heart out. He's had a long career, and you don't know how many years he has left. To let him down is pretty tough."

Ray Lewis did not sound let down by Cundiff, though.

"There's no one man that's ever lost or won a game," he said in front of his locker — almost a straight line across from Cundiff's now-empty stall. "And when I go to him, which I will, quickly, I'll say, 'Don't you ever drop your head. We win as a team, we lose as a team.' There's no, 'Oh, it's Billy's fault, Billy missed the kick.' It happens. Move on. Move on, as a man, because life doesn't stop."

Cundiff recognized that.

"It'll be tough for a little while," he said. "But I have two kids (a 3-year-old daughter and a year-old son), and I have lessons I have to teach them. First and foremost is to stand up and face the music and move on."

Down the hall, the Patriots were breathing a sigh of relief. They knew they'd gotten lucky. They'd only barely earned the chance to get to the final seconds and pray for a miracle. Which is what many of them did.

"We had someone looking out for us," linebacker Jerod Mayo said, as he hugged owner Robert Kraft, who was still in tears holding the Lamar Hunt Trophy and thinking of his late wife, Myra.

None of them had to go up to their kicker, as John Harbaugh did to Cundiff, to say: "You had a tough moment. All kickers have them. Billy will be OK."

Cundiff has paid his dues. He'd been the typical NFL kicking nomad until arriving in Baltimore late in 2009; he was a Pro Bowler last season, was rewarded with a five-year, $15 million contract before the lockout and, despite struggles with consistency and with calf injuries, had proven worthy. He was a near-automatic touchback, and he'd won a game with his foot in October when his kick against the Arizona Cardinals on the final play capped the biggest comeback in team history.

Plus, as he recalled hearing from someone in the locker room after the game, in the past two seasons, he had never missed a fourth-quarter kick.

On the other hand, he pointed out, "I've never kicked in the AFC championship game before."

Cundiff said there was no problem with the snap, the hold, the field, the wind, the hasty conditions as the unit ran onto the field for that kick, his nerves, the size of the stage ... nothing.

"I went out on the field, my timing was a little off, and I missed," he said.

For that, many fans in Baltimore will never forgive him, no matter how many teammates and coaches have his back throughout what will be his longest offseason ever.

"They laid it all out there, I laid it all out there," Cundiff said. "Sometimes, it's just not good enough."